This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

New York, June 30, 2011 – In a new crackdown against the independent press, Belarusian police briefly detained and beat more than a dozen reporters, and broke their equipment at a Wednesday protest rally in Minsk and Brest, according to news reports and CPJ sources in Belarus.

Men in plainclothes also broke cameras belonging to Gridin and Reuters TV cameraman Vladimir Kostin, according to BAJ and the independent news website Charter 97.

"It seems that every time journalists pull out a camera on a street in Belarus they are set upon by police," CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney said. "This thuggish attempt at censoring coverage of social and political protests must stop."

At least 150 people were detained at the Wednesday protest rally in Minsk, the independent Moscow-based news website Gazeta reported. Since late May, opposition activists have been holding a rally called "Revolution via social networks" every Wednesday in Minsk and in other cities across Belarus, according to local news reports.

Up to 1,000 participants protesting the authoritarian policies and repression of President Aleksandr Lukashenko marched in Minsk on Wednesday, according to the BBC, clapping their hands every two or three minutes instead of shouting political slogans – possibly to avoid charges of participating in a protest rally. At the June 22 rally, police detained at least 450 protesters including several journalists, the BAJ and the BBC reported.

Following the June 22 detentions, the BAJ called on Interior Minister Anatoly Kuleshov to "investigate all facts of the journalists' rights violation, identify those responsible for the abuse, and apologize to journalists." Belarusian laws grant journalists the right to attend "socially important" mass gatherings and report on them, BAJ said in a public letter to Kuleshov.

Authorities have been relentlessly suppressing opposition protests and retaliating against the journalists who cover them since March 2006, when officials manipulated the results of the presidential vote, CPJ research shows. In the most recent crackdown that started in late December, Belarusian police and security services intimidated, arrested, imprisoned more than 20 independent journalists, and confiscated reporting equipment, in retaliation for their reporting on the protests against the flawed presidential elections held that month.